Tech Company to Microchip Employees

That’s what one Midwest tech firm seems to be asking itself. In Wisconsin, software company Three Square Market said it will become the first company in the U.S. to start implanting microchips in its employees’ bodies, making them corporate cyborgs.

Using a syringe, a microchip will get implanted in employees’ hands between their thumb and forefinger. Using the near-field communication technology that you have in your phones and credit cards, your cyborg hand would be able to send data via an electromagnetic wave.

What’s so important that it would require a microchip signal to get it?

Snacks.

Three Square Market said it’s doing all of this so their employees can get chips and snacks faster from the vending machine. Using the microchip implanted in their hand allows employees to do a number of things. Employees will have the ability to wave their hands to get chips from the company vending machine, enter the building, and login onto their computers at work.

“It’s the next thing that’s inevitably going to happen, and we want to be a part of it,” Three Square Market CEO Todd Westby told local station KSTP about why his company is doing this. So far, more than 50 employees have agreed to get the implant.

Naturally, the company did emphasize that it will not force its employees to have the microchip implanted in their hands.

These microchips are said to be biologically safe for you to receive, but are they safe for your personal data?

While Westby promised that the microchip data would be encrypted and secure, implanting chips in your employee’s bodies does raise privacy and security concerns. The microchips have the ability to track your location, tracking the number of times you log on to your computer, how often you enter the building and the time that it occurred. It can know private data about your health, like how often you’re buying those chips. A lot of valuable tracking information for a company to have that can measure your performance. And even if a company promises not to disclose this, a hacker could.

Although these human cyborgs would be a reported first for the U.S., this implantation has already been going on in Europe. Swedish startup Epicenter said that about 150 of its employees have agreed to be microchipped, so that their hands can act as swipe cards, getting them into buildings and paying for their smoothies. A convenient way to get around the office, to be sure. But it remains to be seen at what cost.

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